The iPhone XR might be 2018's breakout iPhone. With the XR, Apple manages to take many of the standout features of the iPhone XS and encase them in a candy-colored shell that costs $250 less.

At 5.94 by 2.98 by 0.33 inches (HWD), the XR is between the size of the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus. Small-handed people are just going to have to deal; Apple seems to be moving away from smaller phones in general (it's stopped selling the iPhone SE). It's certainly a little bit wider than I'd prefer, but recently I've been using the 3.06-inch-wide OnePlus 6 as my primary phone, and it's fine. I do miss narrower phones a bit.

The XR's two key features are both visual, and they're both things that pop when you're handling the phone in person. The first is the LCD, a 6.1-inch, 326ppi panel with the weird resolution of 1,792 by 828 pixels. It appears to have been chosen to keep the dot pitch at a standard iPhone density, which lets apps work properly.

Okay, so wait, you say. The iPhone 8 Plus has a 5.5-inch screen and it's bigger and wider. That's the magic of aspect ratios: The XR's screen is taller and narrower and goes right up to the edge of the phone, with the infamous notch at the top, so Apple can quote 6.1 inches while making a physically smaller phone.

But man—this looks a lot like an iPhone X display. It's a very good, very saturated, very deep LCD. Hold it right next to an iPhone XS and yes, you can tell the difference, but it definitely looks more saturated and OLED-like than your average LCD.

The other thing that jumps out is the back: The colors are terrific. Apple has done colored phones before, with the iPhone 5c, but these colors are shimmery aluminum under glass, and they have a rich, enamel-like look to them. The XR's blue, red, and yellow are much more appealing than the XS's gold, which honestly looks pretty brown. The phone also comes in coral, which is a pale pinkish color, as well as black and white, but really, go bold.

The home button is gone, but the screen acts much like the X's, with Face ID and swiping to go home. The phone is water resistant, it has wireless charging, and no, it has no headphone jack. It's a lot like an X that way.

On the back, there's a single 12-megapixel, f/1.8 camera with a noticeable bump. (There's a 7-megapixel, f/2.2 camera on the front.) Like the Google Pixel phones, the XR can do software bokeh or portrait mode; using iOS 12, it can also fool with the extent of the bokeh after the fact, blurring or sharpening the background of the image. I took some software bokeh shots, and they are typical of the kind: faces are silhouetted quite well, but flyaway bits of hair got caught in the bokeh distortion field.

The XR has dual speakers, one on the bottom and one at the top of the phone. Trying them just after listening to the iPhone XS Max, they don't seem to have the crazy, almost room-filling stereo separation that the Max's speakers do.

Inside, the XR has the same A12 Bionic processor as the XS and the XS Max, backed by between 64GB and 256GB of storage. I couldn't run benchmarks during my short time with the phone, but the A12's specs look absolutely fearsome, especially in the graphics and image-processing departments.

There's still some mystery around the XR's modem. The phone doesn't have gigabit LTE like the XS does, although it does support T-Mobile's new rural Band 71.

The XR supports Apple's unique dual-SIM solution, which uses one physical and one embedded SIM. (I couldn't test it because it wasn't activated on the phones in the demo room.) In general, our carriers have banned dual-SIM phones in the past; the most successful so far have been OnePlus phones, which haven't been sold through carriers. Apple's dual SIM solution, in the US, would enable someone to use AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile (but not Sprint) as their primary carrier while using any carrier that offers a SIM card as the secondary carrier. (What happens to Sprint users? That's another mystery I'm working on.)

The XR is coming a little later than the XS is, with a sale date of October 19 and an arrival date of October 26. At $749, I think this is really the sweet spot for iPhones this year. The difference between the XR and the XS comes primarily in the screen, camera, and modem. I don't think iPhone users care about modem performance, and the XR's screen and camera are both very, very good—probably good enough to make iPhone buyers wonder why they should spend more.

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

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